Passionate About India

Growing up in a Bengali neighborhood, in Delhi's C.R.Park, meant even at an early age of ten, there were friends who knew the basic difference between capitalism and communism, and had clear-cut preferences! Of course, these preferences would be heavily influenced by their parents! And my father is perhaps the only Indian who did a full fledged Master’s Degree in National Economic Planning from an erstwhile communist nation, the erstwhile East Germany. Needless to say, my first story books were on Lenin's life and I had been totally charmed by him into believing in the positive aspects of communism, and till date remain so. And on the giant world map that hung in front of his study table, the country that I heard and studied most about till I passed out of my school in 1989 was a country many of my readers today aren't even aware of! A country called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics! Ruled by leaders who followed and most importantly understood to a large extent the ...

The cracks are already visible all across Europe. It was first Greece, then Portugal and Italy, with Spain waiting in the queue. The current situation of Europe reminds me of the situation post World War II – wherein most European economies and societies were in complete anarchy! Since the last five years, European nations have been facing major economic setbacks, which have been triggered by political mismanagement and have impacted their entire social structure to a large extent. Today, fallouts of erstwhile strong economies are leading to a cascading effect and sending tremors across the continent! Amongst all of them, Italy makes an interesting case because as a nation, it has been ranked among the top 25 most developed nations, has one of the best quality-of-life (features among the top ten in the quality-of-life index) and has a per capita GDP at par with other developed nations of the world. This fourth largest European economy is today struggling with a $2.2 trillion debt which...

When I went to China a decade back, what I saw hit me very hard. I felt that if all of us in Delhi were to work 24x7 for 25 years, it would still be tough to convert Delhi into Beijing. That’s the China I was expecting to see when I went there again last month. What I saw instead was an extra 25 years of growth in the last 10 years!!! If ten years back, there were gigantic roads but less cars, this time the roads were filled with American cars; brands which American companies haven’t even cared to launch in India! If the last time I saw high-rise buildings, then this time I saw ten times more of them! If the last time I was amazed with Beijing, then this time I realized that we couldn’t even become Guangzhou if we worked 24x7 for the next 50 years. I believe that every Indian politician must have a visit to China as a mandatory part of his induction process into the Parliament (especially the Communists of India who have also so shamefully cheated their respective states year after yea...

A few days back, the world population touched the 7 billion mark. No wonder the debate has gained momentum about how this growing population would put unprecedented pressure on already scare resources. The riots over food (in Egypt), water crisis and deaths due to curable diseases in developing countries have raised concerns over the population explosion. With the 7 billionth living child hailing from a country like India (and some other nations, symbolically chosen by the UN), the blame of populating the world and causing the global crisis is being shifted back to the developing nations and citizens of the Third World! But then, the moot question is – is the earth really not ready for 7 billion people and is nature really stretched for generating resources for all? Are the citizens of developing nations consuming more and is the population expansion in these countries the real reason behind the growing resource crunch? Last year in August, Obama blamed India and China for the global f...

After seven odd assassination attempts over the last four decades, it was on October 20, 2011, that one of the most successful Libyan leaders Muammar Gaddafi kissed the most brutal and disgraceful death. Libyan fighters snapped him out of his ‘hole’ and shot him to death. His body, half naked, completely wounded, shambled hairs and bloodied was then delivered as prized possession to Misrata (a city near Sirte) where it was put on public display as a token of victory for the rebels. And with it came an end of the era, which Gaddafi built over 40 years. And with his end, the US again proved its double standards to the world! Yes Gaddafi was a ruler who made a lot of personal wealth the way perhaps many other rulers in India and many other countries try to do. He ruled with an iron fist but then many other rulers across the world do the same. But here are some facts about Gaddafi. Under his rule and his economic policies, Libya’s human development indicators improved so much that it was ...

United States’ finely tuned images of ‘land of opportunity’, ‘land of the free’ and ‘home of the brave’ – all have in recent time received a major jolt with protestors pouring in from all over the country in thousands. It is probably the biggest protest since anti-Vietnam-war demonstrations in the 70s! Finally their police are finding it tough to control their own people. This time they are failing to smoke them out, because the enemy lies in every other house. I wrote about the coming end of capitalism – the way we know it – in 2008 itself as an aftermath of the latest recession that has hit the world due to its blind belief in free market profiteering and was surprised why (despite people around the world, from countries in the Middle East to a laid back country like India, showing a tendency to come out on the streets to press for their rights) people in the western world were delaying coming out in the streets to press for what was their right – the right to stable and dignified li...

This December, I am supposed to be speaking on education in a summit in Africa. As I was researching on what to speak, I realized that while the entire world is leapfrogging to state-of-art technology to impart education to their children, there are a few unfortunate countries – rather, almost an entire continent – still struggling with blackboards and chalk pieces. On the one hand, developed nations are all set to impart knowledge through varied technology platforms, and are modernizing their syllabi to suit the new learning curves; on the other, we have Africa, a continent that has still not been able to teach basic reading, writing and arithmetic to its children. The continent is still lagging behind the rest of the world in school enrollment – evidence to the fact that dramatic global improvements in education haven’t touched the continent yet. In the last 40 years, while most of the world improved its enrolment trends by leaps and bounds, Africa could only showcase discomforting e...